Friday, March 12, 2010

Rule number one: Know thine audience.

It's a lucky man who's finally pegged his readership and can give them the screaming ignorance and howling misrepresentation that they so desperately crave.AFTERSNARK: It's a bad sign for your argument when you have to make up idiotic shit and pretend it's an actual issue. Here's Adrian, making up idiotic shit:

What would make people happy? Take no prisoners? Inhuman. Hand prisoners over to their own legal authority? Inhumane. Build our own prisons? Well, then you get the complaints that it’s too expensive, or it’s an extra-judicial gulag, or it’s a sign of colonialism. And before long you can be sure Amir Attaran would find a document which proved that a detainee slipped in the shower and cut himself, and we’d be back in permanent scandal mode anyway.

Yes, Adrian, that's the heart of the matter here -- whether a detainee slips in the shower. That's the burning nub of the issue for sure. It's not like we've brought up anything more serious than slipping in the shower. That's what's keeping us awake at nights.

And the majority of commenters over there fall over themselves, competing for the chance to give Adrian a proper good fluffing. Why am I not surprised?

I don't see detainee's slipping in showers as a problem. There are two good bureaucratic solutions to this "problem:" either don't let them take showers or DON'T DO A REPORT when one of them slips in a shower. How long did the government keep the whole torture thing secret. By the time anyone finds out aboot prisoners slipping in showers, Stephen will have dictatorial powers and the liberal media won't have authority to print it. And Stephen can use all those prisons they built in Afghanistan to reeducate all youse CC'ers.

His argument is technically called a 'straw man' argument. If you can't actually argue against your opponents position, you distort it or set up a false position, then demolish that. Very handy, and a perennial favorite with politicians and other lowlifes.

This is a particularly glaring example [Slipping in the shower?? Come on.], but the technique can be surprisingly subtle, is frequently employed, and convinces or influences a lot of people.